Gallery Lock review - where to hide pictures on your Android device

Do you have pictures on your phone that you don’t want just anybody to see? Don’t answer that, just plead the fifth. Gallery Lock is a free, secure app to hide your personal pictures from prying eyes. Tucked away behind a the phone dialler is a secret gallery that isn’t viewable from other spots on an Android device.

Style

Gallery Lock's most stylish feature is launching the app from the phone dialler. That way you don’t even have an icon showing anywhere for folks to wonder about. The novelty loses a bit of its shine since the primary means of adding new videos and pictures to the locked gallery is from the native Gallery app’s share menu, which tends to be fairly visible. Users can also launch into the camera app from Gallery Lock to save new files directly into the protected folders.

The writing throughout many of the UI elements and help sections is poorly spelled at times which can be jarring if you’re a wordy dude like me. Booting users out to Google Play for a review without any option to skip isn’t particularly classy, either. For whatever reason, it reminds me every time I boot up that I can open the options menu with a long press.

Despite that, the user interface is functional, which is all one can hope for in an app like this. Folks looking for a rich, original image viewing experience can keep shopping - Gallery Lock Pro is all about security.

Function

Gallery Lock Pro definitely does what it says it does. Users can set up multiple folders full of pictures and videos that don’t show up elsewhere on the phone. In order to gain access to the app, users must punch in a four-digit PIN code. Files can be viewed in gallery, list, or grid views, and sorted by date taken, date locked, file name, size, and filtered by image, video, or both. Multiple files can be selected at once for quickly unhiding, deleting, moving, or sharing. There’s also some light editing thanks to a left/right rotation tool.

For some reason, there’s an MP3 importer to have background music while you flip through your protected images. Why anyone would want this feature is beyond me, but at least there’s a setting to hide the music player controls.

Pros

Smart, subtle way of hiding pictures and video

Cons

Poor spelling

Dull UI

Conclusion

Those of us leading lives exciting enough to merit hidden photo folders will be really happy with Gallery Lock. There are a few features that could complete Gallery Lock, such as automatic cloud backup to private folders, which could enable another dialer hash code to blow up the app and wipe all hidden images with it, just in case of emergency. An SMS code to do so remotely would be even better, but now we’re just in the realm of wishful thinking.

There’s a free version that provides core functionality, and for $2.99, you get the stealth mode option to launch via the dialler, sharing pictures and videos, gets rid of ads, and a few other features. The upgrade process is a little wonky, and it can apparently be tricky making sure your existing hidden pictures don’t disappear, but there are restore options that should work.

hai...i cant open my blocked photos after gallerylock uninstal.i tried with all your ideas thats are reinstall and back up,reset.....but still that photos are some other formate.i cant able to open.please help me

I am having issues when going into my app. A popup comes up saying to use additional features in the light version it is necessary to install perfect applock. Then I can't into my pics. And then sometimes a popup will come on saying the I may have viruses on my phone and I need to be protected. Can this be fixed???

gallery lock is a gud app.... bt weneva i unhide d pics....d position of pic changes...dat is it turns upside down....den i hv 2 again rotate it clockwise...plzzzz sum1 help me....is der any setting in d app...?????????

The file moves to phone storage from sd card after it is hidden: And the phone space getting less and less as you keep going the files to hide. How we can change the hidden files path to sd card rather than the phone storage.

Another way I found for accessing pictures you want to recover is simply force stop this application. Once you open it up again, it will ask you if you want to recover pictures. Do this and the pictures will show up in a folder w/o a password requirement.

I installed the Gallery Lock to my android.
Moved pictures to "Gallery Lock" after which i move the app & data to my SDcard using "App 2 SD".
While browsing the SDcard, i saw the folder : data/galleryLock/protected
Click on it and all my pictures are there! Only the extensions are changed to *.GLK
Those pictures can be viewed by using XEE picture viewer.
You can also change the extension to *.jpg and open the file.

So, for the users out there, Gallerylock is only to lock pictures in your android device. It still can be read elsewhere.

i had use gallery lock photo on my s3.
nw my s3 broke down n the touch pad cant use d..
can i transfer all my gallery lock photo to my computer??
how to transfer?
i need take out all the photo before send it to service centre
can u teach me??

I don't think you picked the best hide app on Android to review. Hide It Pro by Anuj Tenani on the Play Store is head and shoulders ahead of this app imo. It offers many of the same features, a very nice ui, offers dialer unlock, can actually be used as a functional audio volume manager and shows up as Audio Manager in the app draw and wheb sharing in the gallery.

Why do people only think of nude pictures? Maybe you are a Brony in the closet and don't want others to see your captioned My Little Pony pictures... or your nerdy Comicon photos... or in a more serious note, clothing or hardware you've designed and don't want others to see.

All you need to do is put create an empty text file with a name of .nomedia (note the leading dot) in any directory and the gallery app as well as dropbox upload will not show those files. You will need a file manager to do that as well as look at these files.

Simon: I'm pretty sure the music player is there to play the bow chicka wow wow music while you look at your hidden photos...